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All
Saints, Croxton

You only have to look at a map to know that
Croxton is a little out of the ordinary. Apart from a
back lane which meanders along the edge of the battle
training area to emerge near West Tofts, the only road
out of the village towards civilisation leads into the
town of Thetford. It must be very odd to have the wider
world refracted through the prism of one of East Anglia's
dullest towns. Croxton itself is pretty, and set along a
long, straight road which presumably connected Thetford
to Watton before the Second World War and the British
Army intervened. Now, it feels rather out on a limb. The
road rises to the point where the church sits in its
graveyard, and then falls away again. The church is hard
against the road, its round west tower lifting to a
fairy-tale spire. It would be an exaggeration to say that
the effect is like that of a Rhineland castle turret, but
it is certainly rather un-East Anglian. To the south is a
pretty thatched cottage bordering the graveyard.

Possibly
as a result of the proximity of Thetford, where all the
churches are inaccessible, All Saints is kept locked;
and, although a keyholder is listed, he wasn't in. This
was disappointing. This church was extensively
redeveloped in the 19th century, and the interior is by
no means as interesting as the exterior, but for one
curiosity. Munro Cautley's majestic journey through the
churches of East Anglia in the 1930s and 1940s included a
survey of the different kinds of fonts he found in the
1,300-odd churches he visited. He noticed what no one
appeared to have spotted before: the font here is in the
same shape and style as most of the 40 or so known Seven
Sacrament fonts, generally considered the height of late
15th and early 16th century English church art. Most of
them are in Norfolk, the rest mainly in Suffolk. The
panels here are completely effaced, as they are at a
handful of other churches; but standing on tiptoe and
looking down the length of the south aisle through its
eastern window to gaze at the font at the far end, I
couldn't help thinking that Cautley was probably right.